Best tool for a university book exchange?
June 22, 2009 7:48 PM Subscribe
I'm starting a website for students at my school to buy and sell textbooks. What would be the best way to do this?
I'm not doing this to make money, and I'm willing to eat operating costs (which should be pretty low) in order to stick it to the man (the bookstore and their draconian buy back rates). I'm just trying to figure out what would be the best way to do it. My problem is not so much technical but creative. Options I've thought of:
1. A wordpress install - someone would create a listing as a post, and categorize it according to department. This would be simplest, but maybe not the most functional.
2. A phpbb install - someone would create a listing as a new thread within the subforum of the department of the class. The negative here is that phpbb seems kind of bloated for what I need. I also have little experience with it as an admin, and I don't know how easy it is to customize.
Any ideas? Is there some other software that would be better for something like this? The website isn't processing any transactions or anything, I just want listings. The easier to categorize and sort listings the better.
I'm not doing this to make money, and I'm willing to eat operating costs (which should be pretty low) in order to stick it to the man (the bookstore and their draconian buy back rates). I'm just trying to figure out what would be the best way to do it. My problem is not so much technical but creative. Options I've thought of:
1. A wordpress install - someone would create a listing as a post, and categorize it according to department. This would be simplest, but maybe not the most functional.
2. A phpbb install - someone would create a listing as a new thread within the subforum of the department of the class. The negative here is that phpbb seems kind of bloated for what I need. I also have little experience with it as an admin, and I don't know how easy it is to customize.
Any ideas? Is there some other software that would be better for something like this? The website isn't processing any transactions or anything, I just want listings. The easier to categorize and sort listings the better.
I think a forum (maybe phpBB, maybe not, that part's up to you) would be a much better solution. Create a section for each department (Psych, English, etc.) and let people fill it that way. It's a lot easier to look through a page like that than it would be with a Wordpress install.
Some other thoughts on the matter:
1 - Don't separate people looking to buy and looking to sell. There's too much of a chance that, for example, you're looking to buy something that I'm selling and we miss it because the posts are in separate places.
2 - Try to get some sort of standard going for threat titles. I would say that the specific class (ie PSYC 313) would be an essential thing to have there. Likewise if the OP is looking to buy or sell, that way if I'm looking to sell the book I won't waste my time reading a thread of someone else looking to sell it.
3 - I would allow multiple postings for the same class/book. No reason not to really.
4 - Make it known that you are not responsible for anything that happens outside of the forum. Have nothing to do with money, property transfer, or setting up the meeting. I know you said in your post that you just want the listings, but I feel like it's important enough to say again.
5 - On the other hand, encourage people to be smart about posting. Not sharing too much personal information, letting people know when a book is no longer available/being looked for, stuff like that.
6 - NoraReed suggested a Wiki. I would have to disagree. While I like Wikis, I don't like the potential for people to mess with what I've posted. Maybe it's just the paranoid side of me thinking that someone selling the same book as me would get rid of my listing so they get the money and not me, or raise my price for the same reason.
7 - Start it now, tell people about it, and don't be discouraged if people don't use it too much for the fall semester. People will find out, but it will take some time. From my experience your main competition will be Amazon and other places that sell used books.
Good luck with it. I would have loved something like that while I was in school.
posted by theichibun at 8:15 PM on June 22, 2009
Some other thoughts on the matter:
1 - Don't separate people looking to buy and looking to sell. There's too much of a chance that, for example, you're looking to buy something that I'm selling and we miss it because the posts are in separate places.
2 - Try to get some sort of standard going for threat titles. I would say that the specific class (ie PSYC 313) would be an essential thing to have there. Likewise if the OP is looking to buy or sell, that way if I'm looking to sell the book I won't waste my time reading a thread of someone else looking to sell it.
3 - I would allow multiple postings for the same class/book. No reason not to really.
4 - Make it known that you are not responsible for anything that happens outside of the forum. Have nothing to do with money, property transfer, or setting up the meeting. I know you said in your post that you just want the listings, but I feel like it's important enough to say again.
5 - On the other hand, encourage people to be smart about posting. Not sharing too much personal information, letting people know when a book is no longer available/being looked for, stuff like that.
6 - NoraReed suggested a Wiki. I would have to disagree. While I like Wikis, I don't like the potential for people to mess with what I've posted. Maybe it's just the paranoid side of me thinking that someone selling the same book as me would get rid of my listing so they get the money and not me, or raise my price for the same reason.
7 - Start it now, tell people about it, and don't be discouraged if people don't use it too much for the fall semester. People will find out, but it will take some time. From my experience your main competition will be Amazon and other places that sell used books.
Good luck with it. I would have loved something like that while I was in school.
posted by theichibun at 8:15 PM on June 22, 2009
First, IANAITP (I am not an IT person) But my 17-year-old techie son recently created a social networking site that included a forum/classified section. He created the site with DNN and used a free Forum Module. DNN is free, open source. If this is the module my son used, it also has a private messaging feature, so people wouldn't have to post their contact information.
You'd obviously need some web development skills and somewhere to park a site in order to do this. It would be cool if you could also buy a domain name (a nominal yearly fee) that fits your school (i.e. usedbooksTigers.com).
posted by caroljean63 at 8:34 PM on June 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
You'd obviously need some web development skills and somewhere to park a site in order to do this. It would be cool if you could also buy a domain name (a nominal yearly fee) that fits your school (i.e. usedbooksTigers.com).
posted by caroljean63 at 8:34 PM on June 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
I think the ideal solution is a wiki running a custom variation on the dynamic page list module that displays & sorts by price. Users would add {{Selling|bookname|price}} or {{Buying|bookname|price}} on their own user page, which then lists them in Sellers and Buyers columns on that book's page.
You handle circumvent theichibun's concern by not letting anyone except admins edit other user's pages. You can make the site more user friendly by having buttons for making buy or sell offers on each book page and setting up their user page automatically. There is an extension for emailing users while shielding their email address already too. etc. A big advantage of a wiki is how fairly good organization can evolve without being imposed from the get go, i.e. books categorized by class, class pages categorized by subject and major, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:36 PM on June 22, 2009
You handle circumvent theichibun's concern by not letting anyone except admins edit other user's pages. You can make the site more user friendly by having buttons for making buy or sell offers on each book page and setting up their user page automatically. There is an extension for emailing users while shielding their email address already too. etc. A big advantage of a wiki is how fairly good organization can evolve without being imposed from the get go, i.e. books categorized by class, class pages categorized by subject and major, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:36 PM on June 22, 2009
Another option is to set up a Yahoo group. This is what Freecycle uses.
Positives: It's very simple, free , and can be set up in about 2 minutes.
Negatives:
Anyone interested in buying/selling or reading the ads must become a member of the group (subscription).
Members must wade through all of the messages to find what they're looking for (although the Yahoo groups site does have a keyword search feature.
Not an easy way to post photos, if that's a requirement.
posted by caroljean63 at 9:39 PM on June 22, 2009
Positives: It's very simple, free , and can be set up in about 2 minutes.
Negatives:
Anyone interested in buying/selling or reading the ads must become a member of the group (subscription).
Members must wade through all of the messages to find what they're looking for (although the Yahoo groups site does have a keyword search feature.
Not an easy way to post photos, if that's a requirement.
posted by caroljean63 at 9:39 PM on June 22, 2009
Please, please look at the ComeGetUsed model. I used it happily all four years. The site is hugely popular at Berkeley and it's run by students, even at other schools. Shoot them an email and see if they'd be interested in working with you!
http://www.comegetused.com/
posted by samthemander at 10:45 PM on June 22, 2009
http://www.comegetused.com/
posted by samthemander at 10:45 PM on June 22, 2009
A guy at my school made something like this last year. It also uses (I'm assuming) some kind of API to display prices at Amazon, Half, etc. alongside allowing students to sell books to each other. I'd suggest teaming up on this with a comp sci kid at your school- I'm pretty sure you can find someone who knows PHP/HTML/whatever and can put something together with you.
posted by MadamM at 11:30 PM on June 22, 2009
posted by MadamM at 11:30 PM on June 22, 2009
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You might consider a wiki.
posted by NoraReed at 8:00 PM on June 22, 2009